I was Just Thinkin’

I am not usually a paranoid person, but I was watching TV and saw the NSA and others in our Intelligence (whoops Security) industry, as they explained that we should just Trust Them!

My opinion is that more of us should be thinking; Really?

Who else, besides myself, is worried when we have an agency with unlimited power and they are building a facility, in the mid-west, that has over a MILLION SQUARE FEET of floor space for data storage.

Let me put that number  into perspective for you. Just hold up your Smart Phone and stare at it for a minute.

It is probably less than 6 x 3 x 1/4 inches in size. And if you assume that your Smart Phone has only 32-GigaBytes of memory, that means that it has 32.000 times 1-Million Bytes of data storage.

Now, I worked in the Cell Phone world before I retired and this funky “Meta_Data” they are all talking about, if they truly are only storing; Caller Phone Number, Called Phone Number , and the date and time of the call, as they swear is the case, then they are only storing far, far, less than 1-kilobyte per call.

Now, the physical device or “memory chip” on the phone itself is less than 1/4 x 1/2 x 1/16 inchs in size, for that 32-GigaBytes of total Smart Phone Storage.

So, lets make another assumption, and say that the 32-Gbyte memory chip can hold 3.2 Million of these Meta-Files.

It is at this point, if you are following my numbers, where things should begin to smell ……… no, they should STINK.

The hair stood up on my arms when I heard they needed a building with over 1-MILLION Square feet for storing this mythical Meta-Data. when, as you can see, they can  store quite a bit of data, specifically what they say they want to store in  an area about the size of a bookcase.

My question is; is the rest of that enormous building for all of the armed guards to stand by, at attention, guns in hand, to protect this small amount of data.

Or, and this is what my suspicious mind tells me; do they have plan on collecting even more data, of other kinds, and storing it centrally, with all of the other data they already have? This Scares Me!

OK, maybe I am just being paranoid.

But, the only people I trust less than a crooked Politician, which they all seem to be, is an omnipotent Security Agency official.

I guess I grew up watching too many old war movies involving soulless Nazis and their unlimited abuses of their power and the resultant damages done to Humanity.

But, That’s Just me!

And I was Just thinkin’

by Don Bobbitt, June 2013

Copyright, Don Bobbitt, 2013, All Rights Reserved